JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) — Exactly a week after Joplin was nearly leveled by the deadliesttornado to strike the U.S in decades, President Obama visited the Missouri city to offer hope to survivors and promises of help.

By J. Scott Applewhite, APPresident Obama views damage from the tornado that devastated Joplin, Mo., with residents on Sunday.

President Obama views damage from the tornado that devastated Joplin, Mo., with residents on Sunday.

Obama came face to face Sunday with the legions of homeless, consoling the community as it remembered the more than 130 people killed in the storm. The memorial service erupted in cheers when Obama said, “I promise you your country will be there with you every single step of the way,” a pledge he extended to all parts of the nation raked by violent storms this season.

The service punctuated a day of remembrance as authorities pressed on with the task of identifying the victims and volunteers combed through the apocalyptic landscape of wrecked neighborhoods where nothing was left whole.

Hundreds stood in Joplin’s Cunningham Park for a moment of silence at 5:41 p.m. — to mark the first report of the tornado — surrounded by wrecked cars and twisted poles. Many in the crowd wore white T-shirts emblazoned, “Joplin’s Heart Will Sing Again.”

Obama made the same vow hours earlier during the service, telling locals: “We’re not going to stop ’til Joplin’s back on its feet.”

The Joplin tornado was the worst to hit the United States in decades. Hundreds were injured, and 39 people remained unaccounted for as of late Sunday. There are four more people whom family members have reported as deceased, but those deaths haven’t been officially confirmed.

Air Force One flew over a massive swath of brown — a land of flattened houses and stripped trees — on its approach to Joplin. On the ground, the destruction was even more stark and complete. Obama confronted painful sights at every turn and said nothing in his life measured up to what he saw this day.

Yet he spoke, too, of redemptive moments, the stoicism of the community and tales of plain luck. He told a story of a man he talked to who had taken a chicken pot pie out of the oven, heard the storm was coming, hid in a closet and “came out without a scratch.” Obama celebrated the spirit of volunteers who have flocked to Joplin to help, the pickup truck owners who ferried people to the hospital and the citizens who lined up for hours to donate blood to people they don’t know.

“You’ve demonstrated a simple truth,” he told the service, “that amid heartbreak and tragedy no one is a stranger. Everybody is a brother. Everybody is a sister. We can all love one another.”

The crowd of hundreds at the service reflected a community in the midst of rebuilding: people in shorts and baseball caps, and plenty of babies who occasionally burst out crying. The president talked over the screeching until a baby was hurried out by the mother.

Obama got a notably warm reception in this conservative part of Missouri. His remarks were tailored for a religious service, with quotes from scripture, references to the love that binds people to each other, and comments on the essential goodness of humanity. The stories of the storm lead us to “put aside our petty grievances,” the president said. “There are heroes all around us, all the time. So, in the wake of this tragedy, let us live up to their example: to make each day count.”

Known for his cool, even-tempered demeanor, Obama offered his own brand of comforting: eloquent words, plentiful handshakes, some hugs, pats on the heads of children, offers of “God bless you.” Not for him the raw emotion Americans saw in his predecessors George W. Bush or Bill Clinton.

Before the service, Obama’s motorcade pulled into a neighborhood where downed trees cleaved open houses, roofs were stripped or blown off, cars were cratered and splintered wood was everywhere. He saw nothing intact, but rather small domestic sights — a view into a room with a TV still in place, a recliner sitting amid rubble, a washer-dryer standing next to a decimated house. American flags were planted here and there in the mess.

“Sorry for your loss,” Obama told an anguished woman, hugging her twice as they talked. Another woman told him that her uncle lives up the road — he survived but his house did not. “Tell your uncle we’re praying for him,” the president said.

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Ryanair – Flights from Milan

One of the Europe’s biggest low-cost airlines, Ryanair is set to offer flights to Italyin and out of Milan’s Malpensa Airport. Currently, Ryanair flies in and out ofFiumicino in Rome, and there’s no word on whether the budget giant would continue to operate there as well. Italy’s national airline, Alitalia, has pulled the majority of its operations out of Malpensa in order to concentrate on Rome (and on trying to stop losing money hand over fist), and Ryanair sees the Alitalia pullout as the perfect opportunity.

In what it called the “Manifesto for Malpensa,” Ryanair said that Milan’s airport “has never achieved its full potential because it has always bet on the wrong horse: Alitalia.” Ryanair’s bid to establish operations in Milan was delivered a couple weeks ago, and the airline is apparently ready to spend over $1 billion between now and 2012 to:

Guarantee the lowest fares of any airline flying from any Milan airport.

A Ryanair spokesman said that Lombardy and Ireland, Ryanair’s home base, are similar “because we both have so many small and medium-sized enterprises which need cheap travel.” The airline is counting on the organization which oversees the Milan-area airports to make some concessions as part of the deal, so it remains to be seen exactly how much or how little will happen. One of the keys, according to Ryanair, is that the Milan airports would need to reduce their costs in order to allow them to offer their traditionally super-cheap fares.

Keep an eye on this Ryanair deal, because if it’s successful – even in part – it could mean flying to and from Milan and Bergamo from within Europe is about to get very, very cheap.

There are direct flights to 23 destinations in Italy, most from London, but there’s also a good choice from the Midlands, Liverpool and Scotland. All destinations listed are served by direct, non-stop flights. UK regional airports listed may not offer all routes.

Alitalia (0871 424 1424; www.alitalia.com) London City and Heathrow to Milan Linate and Heathrow to Rome. Onward connections to 25 domestic airports.

Venice Simplon-Orient-Express (0845 077 2222; www.orient-express.com) The two-day journey from London to Venice through the Swiss Alps costs £1,690 full board (single-cabin supplement £290). There are good-value inclusive packages for longer stays in Venice.

When comparing rental quotes online, check that extras such as airport fees, out-of-hours fees and charges for a second driver and theft cover are included. Watch out for a high insurance excess hidden in the small print. Reduce this to zero with an annual policy sold bywww.insurance4carhire.com. Don’t use cheap car brokers that only take a deposit as the car may be given away by the rental agency at busy times. Always keep the fuel receipt after filling up before the airport return. Italian car rental companies sometimes make a post-rental refuelling charge but back down when a receipt is produced.

Many Italian city centres have Zona Traffico Limitato (ZTL) areas, which allow access to residents and permitted vehicles only. The Italian police are zealous in pursuing infringements and obtain driver details from car rental companies. Fines are around £100 each time you enter a ZTL. Look out for overhead cameras and a sign with a red circle. If staying at a hotel inside a ZTL, make sure the hotel phones the police with the registration number and obtains a provisional transit permit. Keep the hotel bill in case you need to challenge a fine.

with toasted pine nuts, mixed leaf, and balsamic dressing or the ravioli of lobster with king prawns in rich tomato and cream sauce. Don’t get stuck at base camp; navigate today’s deal before it disappears off a cliff.

12/03-26/06 | Parma | Arts & Culture | Just 50 years ago, Antonio Ligabue (Zurich, 1899 – Gualtieri, Reggio Emilia, 1965) lived his consecration an artist with an exhibition in Rome at the Galleria La Barcaccia, by Giancarlo Ligabue Vigorelli and to which he participated on condition that the government would give him a gold medal. She sobbed as if he found it in his hands.Soon after, listening to a bes Dam (Kiss me), the famous song by Augustus Daolio of Nomads, you find yourself asking a kiss please “at the Cesar, the landlady of the solar village. It was the expression of “a need for love that breaks your heart.”A dream of normality, therefore, embodied in the purchase of Gilera. But El matt is now a dedicated artist if not at least considered.After the bike, here’s the car, another unattainable dream of a lifetime, complete with a driver that he heard the hat aprendogli the door: a revenge on a terrible existence, subject to rejection and marginalization, of abandonment and illness. Soon comes a paralysis and, in 1965, death.

In 1966, the Quadrennial in Rome hosted his works and the final clearance to the art world, while the major retrospective of the Palazzo Reale in Milan and the most recent exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art in Palazzo Pitti in Florence, placed him among the great artists of the twentieth century.Curated by Augusto Agosta Tota, Magnani Rocca dellaFondazione initiative led by Manfredo Manfredi, in collaboration with the City of Parma, City of Traversetolo and Research Center & Archives Antonio Ligabue, chaired by the same Augusto Agosta Tota, by Marzio water and Vittorio Sgarbi , coordinated by Stefano Roffi, a major retrospective celebrating the one who simplistically has long been called the “noble savage” of Italian painting. The exhibition, titled “Antonio Ligabue. The insanity of genius, “is open from March 12 to June 26 in the Villa of his masterpieces, the exquisite mansion that once belonged to Luigi Magnani. Are presented one hundred and fifty works, an exemplary overview on all the different anime artist: a wide selection of his famous oil, a group of drawings and engravings and some of his intense sculptures made from the original clay of his beloved Po the artist to make it pliable chewy.Ligabue is certainly one of the leading figures of the twentieth century, a great expressionist, like van Gogh and Munch. The talent and tensions are in fact those of a master safe and well you grasp the visionary power, the pictorial and the continuous references – as counterpoint – in the development of his work. Primitivism uncertain of the first phase, more naive and ended with the Thirties, expressionist explosion by violent color and brushwork whooping. A life lived as a conflict that leaves no respite, a life spent in and out of the asylum, where the art was pure and simple business of living and went to coincide with life itself, in a world increasingly hostile to him. A life spent in contact with the animal world he loved so much, that showed with rigorous anatomical study, imitating the ways of the beasts while the paint colors frenetic, visionary in a research identity. Pets of the first period, the Tigers from the jaws gaping, monstrous lions, snakes, birds of prey grabs the prey or fighting for survival: a real jungle with the artist imagines hallucinatory fantasy in the woods of the Po .

E ‘particularly in the portraits that he painted Ligabue their existential pain, crying out with an intense feeling of urgency and feral, it is the torment of a soul through painting finds its voice and its future.Antonio Ligabue. The insanity of geniusThe exhibition and catalog by Augusto Agosta Tota catalog with texts by Pascal Bonafoux, Marzio water and Vittorio Sgarbi.From March 12 to June 26, 2011The exhibition is made possible thanks to the contribution of